Screening of “120 BPM” film on gay issues, cut off by anti-LGBT protests in Bucharest

A screening of “120 BMP/Beats per Minute” film, tackling the homosexuality and AIDS topics, scheduled yesterday at the Romanian Peasant Museum (MTR), has been cut off by anti-LGBT protests. Several people came at the museum, bearing icons, flags and anti-LGBT placards, while chanting hymns.

Feature film “120 BPM” by Robin Campillo, awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes film festival last year, is based on true facts.

In the early 1990s, a group of HIV/AIDS activists associated with the Paris chapter of ACT UP struggle to effect action to fight the AIDS epidemic. While the French government has declared its intent to support HIV/AIDS sufferers, ACT UP stages public protests against their sluggish pace, accusing the government of censoring and minimizing the fight against the disease. When the pharmaceutical company Melton Pharm announces its plans to reveal its HIV trial results at a prominent pharmaceutical conference the following year, ACT UP invades its offices with fake blood and demands it release its trial results immediately. While ACT UP makes some headway with its public protests, its members fiercely debate the group’s strategy, with conflicting goals of showmanship and persuasion, with conflicting aesthetics of positivity and misery. ACT UP struggles to plan a more effective Gay Pride parade than in previous years, bemoaning the depressing, “zombie” atmosphere the AIDS epidemic had created.

Romanian film director Tudor Giurgiu, also present at the screening, reported the incident on his Facebook page and posted a video footage featuring several people carrying icons, tricolor flags and placards reading “Soros, leave the kids alone” and “Romania is no Sodom and Gomorra”, while singing hymns.

“I couldn’t believe I would see this. A gang of Christian-extremists cut off the screening of 120 GMP film. The Cannes awarded film is sabotaged by a cheap happening/circus, featuring ladies with icons, and glassy-eyed youngsters. It seems not real that something like that could happen today in Romania. I recommend the agitators gang to continue their journey to “Soldiers” and “A fantastic woman”. Later edit: the screening was not resumed after all. I propose that from now on the theater halls that screen gay films to also provide protection costumes, helmets, shields and all the rest,” reads Tudor Giurgiu’s post.

“120 BPM”, is France’s proposal for the 2018 Oscars. The film is distributed by Voodoo Films.

Useful

Subscribe Newsletter

The articles contained in this website are trademarks of Romania Journal and subject to the copyright law.
The may not be distributed, modified, reproduced in whole or in part without the prior, handwritten and signed consent of their authors.